The National Survey of Self-Care and Aging (NSSCA) was
conducted during 1990 and 1991 to create a baseline database on the
prevalence of self-care behaviors by noninstitutionalized older
adults. Personal interviews were conducted with 3,485 individuals 65
years of age and older. Oversampling of the oldest old was employed to
assure representation of those who were frail or difficult to reach. A
proxy was substituted if the subject was hospitalized, too ill, or
cognitively not able to resp... (more info)

The National Survey of Self-Care and Aging (NSSCA) was
conducted during 1990 and 1991 to create a baseline database on the
prevalence of self-care behaviors by noninstitutionalized older
adults. Personal interviews were conducted with 3,485 individuals 65
years of age and older. Oversampling of the oldest old was employed to
assure representation of those who were frail or difficult to reach. A
proxy was substituted if the subject was hospitalized, too ill, or
cognitively not able to respond. Questions were asked about the type
and extent of self-care behaviors for activities of daily living,
management of chronic conditions (through self-care activities,
equipment use, and environmental modifications), medical self-care for
acute conditions, and health promotion/disease preventions. Social
support, health service utilization, and socio-demographic/economic
variables were also included. A follow-up study was conducted in 1994
(see NATIONAL SURVEY OF SELF-CARE AND AGING: FOLLOW-UP, 1994 [ICPSR
2592]).

Universe:
Noninstitutionalized Medicare beneficiaries 65 years of
age and older in 1990.

Data Types:
survey data

Data Collection Notes:

The data dictionary lists the variables in alphabetic
order as well as by position.

Methodology

Sample:
The stratified random sample of noninstitutionalized
Medicare beneficiaries 65 years of age and older was drawn from 50
Primary Sampling Units (PSUs), 38 urban and 12 rural. Stratification
was by gender and three age groups (65-74, 75-84, 85 or older).

Data Source:

personal interview

Version(s)

Original ICPSR Release:1996-10-01

Version History:

2006-06-22 The Stata dictionary and system data
files for dataset 1 were corrected to set the storage type as double
for numeric variables with more than nine significant digits.

2006-02-17 The data, the SAS, SPSS, and Stata setup
files, and the documentation have been updated.